Chapter 8
"N-no, that’s not it... I have no idea what you’re talking about..."
Bang Chusan, the young master of Baekmun Express, was trying to weasel out of it with a face still half-swollen from getting beaten by Moyong Yehwa.
"Oh? So you’re going to pretend you don’t know?"
Too bad. I’d seen it.
The exact moment his pupils had trembled the instant the elixir hit the ground in front of him.
"Then that just hurts you."
I pressed harder.
"Aghghghk!"
The force beneath my foot increased little by little.
"How does a so-called young master not know something like this? That doesn’t even make sense."
Creak— crack—!
His spine and ribs began making sounds that should never come from a human body.
"Last time I’m asking. Where did you get this Jamsungdan?"
"Aaaagh...!"
With the pressure making it feel like his body was about to fold in half, Bang Chusan finally cracked and opened his mouth.
"I-I really don’t know! My father’s the one who manages that stuff...!"
"Your father? You mean the guildmaster of Baekmun Express."
"Y-yeah! You’ve messed up now! Do you even know who my father is!? Huh!? How dare you pull this kind of crap—"
My ears automatically switched on noise canceling and filtered out the pig squealing.
"Look at these bastards."
I stroked my chin.
I’d thought they were just some corrupt transport guild dabbling in smuggling. Apparently not.
Turns out they weren’t just a rotten little freight guild. They were a Neo-Heavenly Demon Cult proxy.
* * *
Jamsungdan was a pill that appeared in the original My Murim Academy.
So, yeah, I knew a fair bit about it.
To put it simply, one pill was enough to temporarily and massively awaken your latent potential—just like the name suggested.
And by latent potential, I didn’t mean just physical ability. It included internal energy too.
On top of that, for a while after taking it, you couldn’t feel pain at all, which made it perfect for keeping a person alive when they were hanging by a thread.
And that wasn’t even the end of it.
Jamsungdan also had the effect of boosting internal energy.
It wouldn’t give you a giant dump of qi like a Daehwan Pill or Gongcheong Seokyu, but hey, it was still something.
It was the kind of pill not only a broke little minor sect or a lone wanderer in Murim would covet, but even disciples of major sects would drool over.
I might have wanted it too, exactly as described above.
That is, if I hadn’t known where it came from.
This thing was made by the Demon Cult.
More accurately, by the remnants of the Demon Cult.
The main headquarters of the cult had fallen during the Orthodox-Demonic War.
Jamsungdan was one of the things created by the remnants of the Demon Cult—the main villains of My Murim Academy.
Why else would I know so much about it?
Because it came up constantly as a major keyword in the original story.
The face, the shape, even the eerie familiarity of it made me suspect something. And sure enough, I’d been right.
Why would a bunch of total losers who’d been utterly ruined start making medicine?
Trying to cash in on drug development or something?
...So they really were moving behind the scenes.
No, Jamsungdan was merely a tool for the remnants of the Demon Cult.
A means to weaken Murim and rebuild the cult.
Jamsungdan wasn’t some miracle pill that was just generously kind to everyone.
It’s called a pill, but it’s basically a drug—or poison.
The remnants of the Demon Cult also called Jamsungdan the Magic Pellet, and it had two traps hidden inside it.
The first was the ability to awaken latent potential.
The user became addicted first to that newly awakened potential.
The first time was fine.
But the more times they took it, the more they’d feel an enormous gap and hollow ache whenever that awakened strength wasn’t there.
If you’d never had it from the beginning, you wouldn’t know what you were missing.
But once something disappears after you’ve had it, the empty space feels much larger.
Murim people are especially vulnerable to craving power.
Only a tiny few could resist that hunger.
And even if you cut off the craving, the real problem’s somewhere else.
The second trap in Jamsungdan.
Boosting internal energy.
Did you really think some pill made in the Demon Cult would increase your qi cleanly and harmlessly like a Daehwan Pill?
It does raise it. Just not by much.
But along with that increase comes a little bit of demonic qi, slipped in almost unnoticed.
The tiny, stealthy demonic qi clings to the user’s dantian and infiltrates it.
And once it does, that demonic qi makes the user crave another dose of demonic qi—another Jamsungdan.
It’s like drinking seawater to quench your thirst. A vicious cycle from hell.
Take the pill again, and for a moment the thirst goes away—only to come roaring back even worse.
If the craving still isn’t satisfied, the demonic qi seeps all the way into the bone marrow and drives you into qi deviation.
And among those cases, in a vanishingly rare number of them... no, we weren’t at that stage yet.
Anyway, after taking Jamsungdan a few times—ta-da!
The user, now addicted to the bone, is reborn as a loyal little Demon Cult proxy.
Even if a pill peddler exposes their identity, there’s nothing the user can do.
If they get the cult member angry and the guy confiscates their Jamsungdan, they’re the only one who loses. So they become a total supplicant with no leverage whatsoever.
That was one of the ways the remnants of the Demon Cult quietly expanded their influence.
The guildmaster of Baekmun Express must’ve fallen for the same trick.
...So this is how it ends up after all.
It was a dead ending, but I’d played the original game all the way through, so I already knew something like this would happen.
They built their power this way in the original too.
I hadn’t just sat around twiddling my thumbs either.
Since I’d been possessed into an earlier point in time, I figured I might as well try to fix the past, so I joined the Orthodox-Demonic War.
I started with the subjugation of the Heavenly Demon and kept helping with the elimination of the remnants after that, along with a bunch of other efforts.
How hard I’d worked should be obvious from the title of one of the Seven Martial Stars.
Anyway, because of that, a lot of things changed, and in fact, they really had changed.
The problem is I couldn’t change the most important part.
"Haah..."
A sigh slipped out of my mouth.
No matter how much I struggled, was I still just an outsider?
As if some force of fate was at work, things were flowing exactly along the original story’s path.
Rumble-rumble-!
"Hm?"
I was thinking about what to do next when I felt a vibration beneath my feet.
"Grrrkk!"
Bang Chusan, who had been pinned down, gritted his teeth and tried to force his body up.
"T-take your foot off me..! You filthy barbarian bastard!"
"So you already took Jamsungdan?"
Looks like he’d swallowed it while hiding among the corpses.
Wait, does his father feed him stuff like this?
Then again, he’d probably know what kind of pill it was by now.
Of course, that last bit was me talking nonsense because I didn’t actually know the details.
Bang Chusan’s father had never given his son Jamsungdan.
All Bang Chusan had done was notice his father secretly taking the stuff all the time, then swipe one from the safe.
When I’d checked this fatty’s martial ability before, he’d been, at best, second-class.
Still, maybe because he was the guildmaster’s son and had eaten plenty of good food growing up, his internal energy was at the first-rate level.
Wriggle-wriggle—!
As the pill’s effects kicked in and his latent potential awakened, Bang Chusan surprisingly began pushing my foot back little by little.
"Oh?"
I was holding back a bit, and yet he was actually pushing me off?
His flesh and internal energy swelled rapidly.
"Kraaaaaagh!"
Whoosh—!!
A violent burst of energy erupted from his body.
I could have just kept increasing the force and stomped him to death, but instead I grabbed the Jamsungdan that had been blasted loose with him and let myself be pushed back obediently.
If things really are going to follow the original story, there’s no harm in experiencing it in advance.
At last, having somehow overcome one of Geom Mujin’s legs, Bang Chusan struggled to his feet and growled.
He looked like a boar that had finally endured too much humiliation and oppression.
"I don’t know how you found out about Jamsungdan, but if this is how it’s going to be, I won’t let you leave alive!"
"......"
For a second I was genuinely stunned by a line I hadn’t heard in ages.
"Die!!"
His skin flushed the deep red of a date, as if he’d been possessed by some General Guan ghost, and he charged at me.
"Yikes."
I stepped back even faster and dodged his attack.
Bang—!
His fist smashed into empty ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.
"Kraaaagh...!!"
Bang Chusan immediately chased after Geom Mujin, throwing punch after punch.
Pow—! Pow-pow—!!
Air burst apart around his fists, which now carried vastly amplified brute force and inner power.
He’d apparently learned enough martial arts for his punches to follow the flow of a basic form.
Looks like the base technique is usable, but he only learned it in the shabbiest, most superficial way possible.
Geom Mujin moved with footwork, slipping past the fists.
"G-ggh! Why won’t you let yourself get hit!?"
As I kept slipping away by a hair’s breadth, Bang Chusan was driven half-mad.
"Just let me hit you!"
"You should throw an attack worth getting hit by first."
"Shut up!"
My taunts made him furious.
With his attacks growing even more savage, Geom Mujin’s eyes gleamed calmly.
So when latent potential awakens, you get about two to three times stronger?
The boost is impressive, but I should factor in that this guy’s original level was low to begin with.
How long does the effect last, exactly? Is that the same as in the original?
I analyzed Jamsungdan as I dodged his sloppy punches and kicked in the occasional counterattack whenever I found an opening.
Thwack-thwack-thwack—!
"Hahahaha! That kind of attack doesn’t even tickle!"
"Looks like it doesn't."
On Bang Chusan’s face, the date-red skin caused by the pill and the bluish bruises from Geom Mujin’s knuckle-duster fists merged together into a bizarre, ugly harmony of colors.
He was laughing, though for some reason his swollen eyelids were beginning to block his vision and his teeth were starting to fall out of his mouth, but that was probably just my imagination.
Tap—
"Hm?"
While I kept moving my feet to avoid his attacks, I bumped into a tree behind me.
"Uwooooh!!"
Bang Chusan raised both fists high and brought them crashing down.
Dodging the hammer-fists, Geom Mujin leapt upward.
"Got you!"
As Geom Mujin fell downward from midair, Bang Chusan immediately swung his fist.
"You idiot! Let’s see you dodge in midair!"
Whoooosh—
Right before the punch landed, wind gathered around both of his ankles.
Geom Mujin flicked his wind-wrapped ankles, and his body twisted direction in midair.
Whiiish—!
"What!?"
He dodged the fist like a leaf riding a breeze, and Bang Chusan was struck dumb with shock.
"Using your head? So you weren’t just a complete idiot, huh."
I landed lightly on the ground and let the hood I’d stolen from him flutter in my hand.
It was the hood he’d been wearing to hide his bald head.
"Aren’t you cold without your head covered? Come on over and take it ba—"
"Kieeeek!"
The White-Headed Heavenly Awakening Eagle, who had flown skyward the moment the fight started, called out to me.
"People are coming this way?"
Vmmmm—
Geom Mujin and the White-Headed Heavenly Awakening Eagle’s spirits resonated with each other.
"Huh?"
The view that had shown the young master shifted in an instant, becoming a view of Dabie Mountains as seen from above.
Wait, am I looking through the White-Headed Heavenly Awakening Eagle’s eyes right now?
So spiritual beasts really did have their own miraculous powers.
Shared vision.
Was that the White-Headed Heavenly Awakening Eagle’s special ability?
The hawk’s eyes pierced straight through the brush.
Those are Baekmun Express escort uniforms. Looks like the second wave.
It looked like Uha-sik had left some kind of marker, because they were coming this way without getting lost.
Too bad, but I can’t do this the hard way.
Time to fold the board.
I cut the shared vision and returned to my original sight.
Good work.
I praised the White-Headed Heavenly Awakening Eagle for finally earning its keep and drew my sword.
"Y-you... what the hell are you?"
Bang Chusan asked in a trembling voice.
"Huh?"
I tilted my head at the sudden question.
What the hell is this guy talking about... ah.
Looks like Moyong Yehwa really had knocked him out cold for a long time.
No wonder he’d been acting weirdly brave.
He’d actually been unconscious when I revealed my identity to Uha-sik, so he hadn’t heard a thing.
That’s why he’d just been treating me like some ordinary barbarian.
"If you want to know who I am, ask Uha-sik, the guy who boarded Charon’s ferry."
"W-wait..!"
Bang Chusan hurriedly waved both hands, but in the darkness of night the blade was already dancing.
Slash-slash-slash—!
"Aaaagh!"
He couldn’t feel any pain, but Bang Chusan still screamed.
These sword strikes were different from the ones I’d used on the escort guards.
Back then my blade had been clean and economical, with no wasted motion. This time it was rough as hell.
Every time I swung my sword, Bang Chusan’s blood and flesh sprayed out around him.
"H-huff... huff..."
This time, even pain suppression was useless.
With every tendon and muscle in his limbs severed, Bang Chusan collapsed to the ground and stared blankly up at Geom Mujin.
"Black hair... this martial skill... no way..."
As the effects of Jamsungdan faded and his reason finally returned, he managed to deduce his opponent’s identity.
"G-great sw— gack!"
"I’m short on time. I’ll hear the rest later."
When the sword light flashed in the night, Bang Chusan’s head dropped to the ground.
Thud— roll—
The severed head rolled across the dirt.
"...The marker..."
"Over there..."
"Hurry..."
I could hear the escort guards getting closer.
Now that I knew the guild was a Demon Cult proxy, I’d considered just charging straight in, but a better idea had come to me.
Third-rate fighters have to hack their way through enemies one by one. First-rate fighters don’t.
Instead of some brute-force idiot method, I should use an intelligent one.
Scritch, scritch—
I dipped my index finger in blood and began writing letters on the bastard’s forehead.
"There."
When I’d finished, I stood up, erased my presence, and started walking away.
If they bring the body back, the whole place is going to explode.
After giving the White-Headed Heavenly Awakening Eagle my separate orders, I left the scene.
And that night, Baekmun Express turned upside down.